Benevolence is silent good will. It is like the sun shining on hard ground, softening the earth, melting the ice, but with no design or intention to heal. It is a state of naturalness which it why it works because the ground feels no debt to the sun. In the same way, to be on the receiving end of benevolence is to be receiving something for which there is not return. Not even a pressure to respond - which is why one does, so easily.

Benevolence is a state of being, reliant on itself alone. It has nothing to do with feelin4g of mercy of preference, sudden stabs of love, it just is. It offers nothing specific, but everyone is drawn to it. It answers not questions, but it enables you to think. It teaches nothing, but because of it you can learn.

To be benevolent is to have forged a link so strong with an unbroken source of energy, that even the interruptions of life cannot block that constant re-fuelling. However dry life is, the tide keeps turning again and again, always. And in the moments just before turning, when life has taken you to the limits, you just know that you're on the brink of a great in-flow, and so you stay quiet, acknowledging temporary emptiness - only as prelude. Only if you hurt someone, does the tide stop turning and you are grounded, and have to fight.

To have become benevolent is the best help you can be to anyone because benevolence has no shape, any more than sunlight has but it can filter into the quiet corners of panic in a person's mind and lighten the burden.

It is the least intrusive virtue and yet it is welcomed everywhere.